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Reviews

Mutate is the current incarnation of Black Country underground musician, DJ and noise-merchant Ade Bordicott.

As a member of the fiercely independent trip-hop / improv outfit Stray Dog City, and more recently a collaborator with like-minded realists And Fait Was Foolish and Mekano Set, Bordicott has consistently been one step ahead of the consistently retro plagiarisms of his local (Birmingham) indie scenes.

In the late 90's, while his peers contented themselves with shameless Slint / Pixies / Pavement / Aphex impersonations, Bordicott and Stray Dog City combined a love of down-tempo, ultra-minimalst grooves with Post Punk and Dub bass-lines, found sounds and lively guitar drones.

DRNE strips those explorations of beat and riff to exposes the inner workings: drones that are far from static, clearly not built from samples and presets but out of real-time, physical performances.

DRNE then is something of a return to form for Bordicott. With ultra-slurred down dronescapes and covert location recordings, he's clearly reclaiming his territory. Organic guitar textures stripped of attack and therefore all trace of even post-rock machismo. No ego. Just performance, balanced between sound and noise.

A little post-production / compression wouldn't have gone amiss but after a few listens, the fluctuations in volume and timbre lend the pieces an all-natural, analog vibe that's perhaps fitting of the style. I look forward to hearing where he takes this.